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Reviews For: ICOM IC-DELTA1A

Category: Transceivers: VHF/UHF+ Amateur Hand-held

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Review Summary For : ICOM IC-DELTA1A
Reviews: 4MSRP: 899.00
Description:
2M/440CM AND 1.2 GIG TRANSCEIVER
Product is not in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
0044.5
AE6EO Rating: 2010-10-08
Unusual and pretty neat! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
On the down side: it's big and heavy enough to use as a defensive weapon against attacking wolves; Icom no longer supports it at all; battery packs and other original accessories and parts are almost unobtainable; battery life limited if you leave multiple bands enabled; limited channel memory by today's standards; no tone squelch in the standard model.

On the up side: it's a tribander (with the rare 1.2 GHz band!); independent receivers/transmitters with selective audio routing; full cross-band repeating; rugged case; good performance.

Some hints for owners:

If the battery and backup both go flat, the radio will no longer power up when recharged. Unplug all power, press and hold FUNC, reconnect power; the radio should reboot itself. At worst (if the memory is scrambled by power loss) you may need to do a full memory reset and reprogram.

A scanned copy of the manual is available at www.rigpix.com - a bit blurry but quite usable.

The radio power jack (and the BP-103 recharging jack) are unusual - coaxial but with a narrow center male pin in the plug. Not the common type, but similar to some laptop power connectors. Turns out it's an EIAJ-4 automobile power connector; Digi-Key has them (part #CP-015-ND) and they aren't expensive, so you can build your own power/charging cables quite easily. It appears as if any supply voltage from 12.5 to 14.5 is acceptable.

If the antenna is trashed, you could substitute a Comet/NCG SH-95 (BNC), or an SMA-703 (needs an adapter), or Diamond SRH-805 or 815 (also need adapters). These would all probably work better than the original rubber duck.

The battery packs can be rebuilt. I sent my toasted BP-103 pack to The NiCad Lady Company last month, got it back yesterday... they opened it without damage and replaced the old 700 mAh cells with a new 1000 mAh NiCd insert. Total cost was around $50. You could rebuild these packs with modern NiMH cells (doubling the original capacity at least) but would probably need a new external charger to charge them without damaging them.

I got mine for a song at a swapmeet last month (apparently quite dead - it needed the power-reboot procedure described above) and am quite happy with this lucky find. Radios for the 1.2 GHz band are hard to come by, and this seems to be a good one!
IZ2CED Rating: 2008-06-12
Very good and unsurpassed Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I've got two second hand IC Delta 1. They works very nicely and I can say they are still unsurpassed. I love the three indipendent radios and the semplicity of utilisation.
They are a bit big but not too much. The only problem is that are very scarce and batteries very difficult to find (but not impossible...).
WY3X Rating: 2007-08-30
Nice, but hard to get parts for Time Owned: more than 12 months.
You probably will have a hard time finding a radio that will perform as well as this one, but it's OBSELETE! I need some small parts and new batteries for mine, but you can FORGET finding any! If parts were available, I'd give it a solid five. Since I'm missing parts and will never be able to buy them, it gets a solid four.
G7TOK Rating: 2005-03-23
Big but good ! Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Receives on all three bands at once & plenty sensitive.
TX audio is adequate.
Backlighting works for the keys but not the legends, so tricky in low light.
Its a biggie, small hands !! forget it.
Heavy too, three bands at once has a price.
Works well on 23cm though, I can hit repeaters 30-40 miles away no problem.
I'll admit its a weird one, but there's nothing else that will do what this can do.
Oh yes, cross-band repeater is a doddle, comes in very handy !!